February 2013

02/28/2013

French
soldiers patrol a street on Feb. 28 in the northern Mali's largest
city Gao. France, which is battling Islamist militants in Mali, will not formally
propose setting up a UN peacekeeping force to take over until at least April,
the French UN ambassador said Wednesday. (JOEL
SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

Syrian
women wait outside a bakery shop to buy bread in Maaret Misreen, near Idlib,
Syria in December 2012. As the civil war drags on, Syrians now spend hours in line every day for a few
loaves of bread and petrol at soaring prices. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen,
File)

For months, the regime of President Bashar al Assad has been pounding local bakeries to punish suspected opposition sympathizers, regardless of whether they are armed fighters or civilians.

Mainly, they are hungry Syrians desperate for a break in the daily attacks to find food for their families. On Thursday Al Arabiya English tweeted that the regime bombed 86 bakeries last month, according to Moaz al-Khatib, who leads the Syrian Opposition Council.

There’s no confirmation of the allegations. But they come at a time when the UN is raising the alarm that the number of refugees fleeing Syria will soon reach 1 million – many of them heading for the borders because the food supply has broken down and their meager resources are at an end.

According to the World Food Program, millions of Syrians are living on less than subsistence rations. When all else fails, bread is the last cheaply available staple. “A growing number of main breadwinners have become unemployed and soaring food and fuel prices across the country have also exacerbated the situation,” it says. The agency, working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, is currently providing food aid for 1.5 million people – and the need is growing steadily.

Attacks on the bakeries that are still operating are making the situation more dangerous for those who remain in the country. A Human Rights Watchreport last August documented 10 attacks that month alone, calling them “deliberate, indiscriminate and disproportionate.”

Since then hundreds more civilians have died for the “crime” of lining up for bread. Meanwhile, Assad has signalled he may be ready to talk peace with the opposition. But that’s months too late for those who have buried relatives. Bombing and starving his way to a settlement has failed, and evidence of war crimes is mounting. Assad will have no easy way out of the morass of mayhem he has created. While his people are running on empty, the dossiers are already full.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflicts, politics and human rights as a correspondent and bureau chief from the former Soviet Union to the Balkans, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and South Asia. She has won both national and international awards, collaborated on two Emmy-winning films and is one of the few journalists to have a war requiem written to her work..

AMMAN-The growing number of Syrian refugees is putting a huge strain on the Jordanian capital’s resources as the latest UN figures showed that the cash strapped kingdom received 60,000 refugees in February alone.

Refugee camps such as Zaatari in the north are meant to serve those fleeing the civil war but 80 per cent of the 300,000 Syrians head for urban centres, including Amman, looking for jobs and housing.
As a result public infrastructure is struggling to cope.

Traffic jams continue into the late hours of the night because of increased number of cars. Water supplies, always scarce, are being depleted. Many state schools are overcrowded with up to 50 students in a classroom.

Jordanians, a welcoming people who have absorbed previous waves of hundreds of thousands of refugees, including Iraqis after the 2003 U.S. invasion and Palestinians after 1948, are increasingly fed up.

Abu Mohamad, whose 11-year-old son will be enrolled in a public school with 50 other students including Iraqis and Syrians said Jordanians were also suffering.

“How can a teacher teach 50 students?” he asked. “The quality of the school will not be high.”

Outside a local charity Kitab al Sunna, crowds of Syrian women and men arrive every morning waving identity papers and begging for food gas stoves to heat dilapidated apartments where several families share a home. Many are turned away because there are not enough supplies.

“I need money for rent, I cannot work and I have five children,” said one man, lifting up his shirt to reveal a thick scar across his stomach, which he said was from shrapnel.

Staff at one hospital told the charity International Relief Committee recently that they were so overloaded, patients may have to be turned away unless the emergency room and pharmacy were expanded.

The vast majority of the Syrians arriving in Amman were poor and uneducated which meant they needed extra help, said General Ali Shukri, a former advisor to the late King Hussein.

“Jordan does not have the luxury to provide out of its own pocket,” he said. “In the long term we do not know what is going to happen because we have never seen a situation like this in the Middle East.”

At a donor’s conference in Kuwait last year $1.5 billion was pledged by various nations to help the Syrians but only $200 million has actually arrived, Valerio Amos, the top UN humanitarian chief told reporters.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq were paying a heavy price for shouldering the burden of the Syrian refugees.

“The refugee crisis is accelerating at a staggering pace, month after month. Countries of asylum have been very generous and kept their borders open, but their capacity to do so is under severe pressure."

Hamida Ghafour
is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in
the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a
book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

The EU is a step closer to imposing bonus caps on bankers - a move many see as a way to calm public anger over hefty pay outs to big money earners being blamed for the financial mess plaguing most of Europe.

An agreement, reached late Wednesday in Brussles, means bankers could only receive bonuses worth two times their salaries.

Some say this is the toughest limit ever imposed. It applies to Europe-based employees of any bank, and, to staff of those banks wherever they are based - be it London, New York or Hong Kong.

In the words of London Mayor Boris Johnson, Reuters reports he said: "This is possible the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman empire."

Somebody has a long memory. Diocletian was a Roman emperor at the end of the 3rd Century.

And in Latvia, a country that saw its economy tank after one of its three big banks failed, British Prime Minister David Cameron who was visiting the country said they would carefully examine the legislation to make sure it can be "flexible enough to allow those banks to continue competing and succeeding in the U.K."

No doubt, if the legislation is passed by the EU's 27-member states, this will be more fodder for the anti-EU movement in Britain. Cameron has pledged to hold an "in or out" vote on staying in the EU if he wins the next election in 2015.

With files from Reuters

Tanya Talaga is the Star's Global Economics reporter. Follow her on Twitter @tanyatalaga

Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Jaafari at the U.N Security Council in New York Jan. 31, 2012. The Arab League
asked the council to adopt a resolution endorsing an
Arab plan for President Bashar Assad to
transfer powers to his deputy. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

Back in the day – the early 1990s – I shared an UN office with NPR’s veteran diplomatic correspondent Linda Fasulo, overlooking the Trusteeship Council.

To be honest, it wasn’t much of an office: more of a dank, closet-sized radio booth. But by then the council wasn’t much either. Conceived along the lines of the cavernous auditorium housing the UN General Assembly, it was draped in heavy velvet curtains that lent a musty Soviet air to the room, and prudently blocked one of the best views of New York’s East River, in case diplomats should be distracted from their duties by the sight of puttering pleasure crafts.

“When decolonization began,” Fasulo recorded in An Insider’s Guide to the UN, “most of Africa was controlled by a few Western nations, while the Netherlands, United Kingdom and France ruled large parts of Asia. Japan had ruled Korea for half a century.” And there were far-flung islands also under the stewardship of Western countries.

Not surprisingly, the curtain fell on the Trusteeship Council when the penultimate trustee territory, Palau, gained its independence in 1994.

But a vestige of anti-colonialism remains – the UN’s Special “Committee of 24” on decolonization, which keeps an eye on 16 “non-self-governing territories” like the Falklands, the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar and the Western Sahara.

And who better to oversee their progress toward freedom and civil rights than Bashar Assad of Syria?

In one of those ironies that make the world body such an easy target for its foes, Assad’s envoy Bashar Ja’afari – a French-educated career diplomat -- was unanimously reappointed this month as the committee’s rapporteur, charged with upholding democratic rights in the last outposts of colonial rule.

Assad’s regime – now in a war that has left 70,000 dead, and counting – has made much of the event, having few international plaudits to boast of. Predictably, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice called it “revolting and absurd,” and the Geneva-based UN Watch added, “indefensible and an insult to Syria’s victims.”

Ja’afari is in good company at committee meetings. Among the 28 or so members are colleagues from Iran, Ethiopia, Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela. How did they all get there? Not, as some UN foes believe, because of a conspiratorial coup at the world body by human rights abusers. It’s a much more mundane combination of diplomatic entrenchment, laxity and cronyism that is endemic in its arcane system.

It allows regional groups to appoint their choices of committee candidates without going to messy elections. So the Old Boys Network works overtime, and democracy not at all. “Clearly, regional groups have fallen down on the job when they put forward embarrassingly inappropriate candidates to represent them,” an unnamed Western dip told the Washington Post’s correspondent and Turtle Bay blogger Colum Lynch.

Also clear: the embarrassing gap between the battlefield and the Diplomats’ Dining Room.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflicts, politics and human rights as a correspondent and bureau chief from the former Soviet Union to the Balkans, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and South Asia. She has won both national and international awards, collaborated on two Emmy-winning films and is one of the few journalists to have a war requiem written to her work.

Pope Benedict XVI waves as
he appears for the last time at the balcony of his summer residence in
Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, Feb. 28. (Max Rossi/Reuters)

Pope Benedict XVI delivered his final
public words as pope on Thursday to well-wishers gathered at the papal vacation
retreat in Castel Gandolfo south of Rome. Here is the translation of what he
said, delivered to a roaring crowd:

"Dear friends, I'm happy to be with you, surrounded by the beauty
of creation and your well-wishes which do me such good. Thank you for your
friendship, and your affection. You know this day is different for me than the
preceding ones: I am no longer the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, or I
will be until 8 o'clock this evening and then no more.

I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on
this Earth. But I would still ... thank you ... I would still with my heart,
with my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, and with all my inner
strength, like to work for the common good and the good of the church and of
humanity. I feel very supported by your sympathy.

Let us go forward with the Lord for the good of the church and
the world. Thank you, I now wholeheartedly impart my blessing. Blessed be God
Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Good night! Thank you all!" (AP)

Philippe Charlier, a forensic medical examiner, addresses
reporters during a news conference held near Versailles, Thursday. King Richard I, the
12th century warrior whose bravery gained him the moniker Lionheart, ended up
with a heart full of daisies, as
well as myrtle, mint and frankincense. (Remy de la Mauviniere/AP)

In July 1838, a historian in northern France discovered a small, sealed, leaden box. It was found during excavacations of the ancient Rouen cathedral in Normandy, and it was engraved with an inscription:

HIC IACET COR RICARDI REGIS ANGLORUM

Translated from Latin, the message reads "here lies the heart of Richard, King of England." Historians determined that it was the partial remains of Richard I, "Richard the Lionheart," who had died in battle in 1199 during the Crusades.

Today, French researchers revealed exactly how the medieval king's heart was embalmed, shedding light on early embalming practices during a period for which there are no known written texts on the subject.

By examining the whitish-brown powder within the box, the team found fragments of linen, suggesting that is how the heart was wrapped. And using electron microscopes they found pollen grains: myrtle, daisy, mint, pine, oak, poplar, plantain, and bell-flower.

Poplar and bellflower were blooming when Richard died, so probably contaminated the sample. But the other plant matter -- particularly frankincense, an important biblical substance -- was almost certainly added during the embalming process to give the king "the odour of sanctity."

The researchers also detected mercury and creosote, both probably used to conserve tissue for as long as possible during the 470 kilometre journey from Chalus, where Richard was killed, to Rouen.

Richard, nicknamed Lionheart because of his courage on the battlefield, was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow shot while he was fighting without using any chainmail, as the paper recounts.

At the time it was typical for bodies of nobles to be taken apart and buried in different areas: Richard's organs and abdomen were put in a coffin in Chalus where he died, his heart went to Rouen, and the rest of his body was buried at Fontevraud Abbey near his father, King Henry II.

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

Carl Bernstein (L) and Bob
Woodward, the Washington Post reporters who
broke the Watergate scandal in the 1970's, stand outside Woodward's home in Washington, June 1, 2005. (Jason
Reed/Reuters)

Back when he was busy taking down Richard Nixon, the now-legendary Bob Woodward played with journalistic fire so hot you could easily envision the powers that be simply taking him out, one way or another, to save the White House.

Small wonder, then, how intense the flames of Twitter become late Wednesday, after Woodward revealed that right here and now, four decades later, the Obama White House is up to similar tricks, ominously threatening Woodward with an uncertain fate over his interpretation of who should wear the blame for Washington's latest fiscal crisis.

First, an Obama aide "yelled at me for about a half-hour," Woodward told Politico. Then, in a followup email from the White House, that same aide warned Woodward "I think you will regret staking out that claim" that Obama deserves the blame for the sequestration crisis.

Woodward, in revealing the flap to Politico, lingered upon the words "you'll regret," making clear he saw it as a veiled threat.

The thick-skinned Woodward didn't seem especially worried, but he wondered how a less experienced reporter might have reacted. "I've tangled with lots of these people. But suppose there's a young reporters who's only had a couple of years -- or 10 years -- experience and the White House is sending him an email saying, 'You're going to regret this.' You know, tremble tremble. I don't think it's the way to operate."

Ah, but the heat went cold today, when Washington watchers got a look at the actual emails from Gene Sperling, Obama's economic adviser. Far from Soprano's-style muscle-flexing, the full text of the White House missives are actually rather innocuous, suggesting -- in a hand-wringing, apologetic way -- that Woodward might suffer reputational damage for mistakenly concluding Obama was "moving the goal post" in the budget crisis.

The full "regret" sentence from Sperling reads: "I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."

As the frenzy died down, Washington blogs harrumphed there was little to see, move along folks. Matt K. Lewis of the Daily Caller concluded "Bob Woodward trolled us -- and we got played."

Mitch Potter is the Toronto Star's Washington Bureau Chief, his third foreign posting after previous assignments to London and Jerusalem. Potter led the Toronto Star’s coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he won a 2006 National Newspaper Award for his reportage. His dispatches include datelines from 33 countries since 2000. Follow him on Twitter: @MPwrites

Syrian children, walk out of an underground tunnel that
their father made with a jackhammer for shelter from Syrian government forces
shelling and airstrikes, at Jirjanaz village, in Idlib province, Syria, Feb. 28. Across northern Syria, rebels, soldiers, and civilians
are making use of the country's wealth of ancient and medieval antiquities to
protect themselves from Syria's two-year-old war. The shelters are built of thick stone
that has already withstood centuries, and are often located in strategic
locations overlooking towns and roads. (Hussein Malla/AP)

"The summary of the findings of the study are presented in Figure 1, and show that the projected happiness is upward with high confidence," the paper concludes after a helpful figure entitled "the happiness over time."

"Taking these results into account, the author proposes to Christie (Nelan) the indefinite continuation of the study."

Nelan and her now-fiancé, physics PhD student Brendan McMonigal, met as advanced physics and math students at the University of Sydney, according to Australian media accounts of the proposal, which went viral this week after Nelan posted it on Reddit. It's been viewed nearly 1.9 million times.

McMonigal told the Sydney Morning Herald that he brought Nelan to the spot on campus where they met, saying he needed help with a paper he couldn't understand.

"I subtly got down on one knee to get the paper from my bag and hand it to her, then stood up to wait for her reaction," he told the Herald. "She hadn't noticed what was happening at all, but as a typical physics grad, she read the abstract and then skipped straight to the conclusion and quickly cottoned on."

The couple, who have been dating for seven years and will be married next month, have received torrents of congratulations, along with the occassional cheeky comment.

"Wait. Was this peer reviewed first?"

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

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